Customer Reviews

5 Tips for a Greener Road Trip

5 Tips for a Greener Road Trip

Here's advice on how to reduce your journey's gas cost and environmental impact at the same time.

Road
trips define America as much as baseball and apple pie, lemonade and
lightning bugs. But with gas prices climbing past $4 per gallon and
growing sensitivity to the environmental costs of driving, they've
become more difficult to justify than ever. There are ways, though, to
compromise â€" not on the natural splendor and the kitschy charm of the
roadside attractions you'll encounter on the way, but on the
environmental and financial impacts of the expedition. Hereâ€'s our road
map to a green-friendly trip.

The basics

Don't even think
of leaving home â€" for the office, much less for a 1,000-mile road trip
â€" without ensuring that your car is primed for fuel efficiency. And
that goes for Prius owners as well as for those who drive an SUV. The
Automobile Association of America (http://www.aaa.com) recommends a few
basic adjustments. "There's simple stuff you can do," says David
Weinstein, a AAA spokesman. "You might not see it gallon by gallon, but
over the life of the car, it definitely adds up." Weinstein suggests
three key moves: "Watching your speed is the biggest thing you can do;
the faster you go, the more gas you use," he says. The second and third
steps might require assistance from a service station attendant.
"Certainly you'll want to make sure your tires are properly inflated
and your air filter's clean. That's something the people who are
checking your oil should be looking at, as a matter of course." Those
three steps are really what matter, Weinstein says. "Anything beyond
that, and you're getting into the weeds."

Renting eco-friendly cars

If
you decide that renting is the best way to go, some cars make better
companions than others. More and more car rental agencies are stocking
fuel-saving hybrid cars, like the Toyota Prius and Honda Civic,
alongside their SUVs and sedans. EV Rental (http://www.evrental.com),
with seven locations in Arizona and California, bills itself as the
country's first rental car company to maintain an all-hybrid fleet; at
600 miles per tank, refueling your way up the Pacific Coast Highway
should be relatively painless. (The hybrids are also available through
EV's partner, Fox Rent A Car.)

Bio-Beetle
(http://www.bio-beetle.com), meanwhile, rents both hybrids and cars
that run on biodiesel from its locations in Hawaii and Los Angeles.
Though you'll need to refuel the car with biodiesel â€" something that
can be a bit of a chore compared to your average fuel-up, simply
because of the relative scarcity of refueling stations â€" you might
never need to worry about that, since Bio-Beetle says its biodiesel
rentals can get up to 800 miles per tank.